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Alfarell

A 229-post collection

Challenge #04537-L153: Please Don't Make Me Laugh

They say laughter is the best medicine, but that's not quite true. It's just a good aid to proper care. -- Anon Guest

Let me get this into your head - laughter is not always the best medicine. Just try doing it when your next breath is being debated by committee. Metaphorically, of course. It's just as difficult to breathe when it feels like you're allergic to air.

I'll spare you the sordid details of abundant mucous generation and leave you with this: I'm almost drowning, every day. Unless I take specific and measured precautions.

Medicated mists, potions and pills. A very special diet to reduce the flow, so to speak. And constant antisocial noises to get the nastiness out before it does drown me. And someone or something to help me shake it loose as I attempt to do what I can to stay alive.

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Challenge #04536-L152: Desperate Motivations

To get to where they are needed, they must travel through the maelstrom of lightening, heavy rains, winds, ... and worse. -- Anon Guest

The world was full of scars like this. If 'scar' could apply to an eternal cyclone guaranteed to repel travelers from attempting to breach it. In the middle, in the eye of that permanent storm, was the floating island of Aljanna. A paradise lost to most of the mortal world.

Legend held that they were safeguarding a mighty weapon.

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Challenge #04533-L149: Sweet-scented Poison

I got these new flowers today. They whisper to me, while I sleep; whisper secrets nobody can know. -- Anon Guest

They look like nice flowers, don't they? The way they gleam in the light. They're so pretty. I received them in an opalescent vase three months ago and they haven't wilted. They only need fresh water once a day. They're beautiful... and they're driving me mad.

They whisper to me whenever it's quiet. Soft words that I can barely understand. They're

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Challenge #04530-L146: Oddly Desired

Gifts. And sometime the person gifted has non-stand 'want it's' - Inspired by Mother's day Lady who got a trailer of horse manure for her roses. -- She Who Knits

Felice squealed in joy at the sight of the cart and what she could see inside it. Logs of hazel wood. Baskets of dragon eggshells and scales. Careful shelves of assorted gemstones. Vials of creature blood and mats of felted creature hair.

"Oh you shouldn't have," she cooed.

"It's all ethically sourced,

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Challenge #04528-L144: Eye of the Needle

Seeing the pain in their eyes, the tailor promised this.

"I will love this child as my own blood, care for them to the best of my ability, and ensure they have a good life. But, they will know, you are also their parents. Even away, you will be in the heart."

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-04495-l111-fated-family -- Anon Guest

Kismet Foundling's first memory was the careful flash of a needle and thread through soft cotton cloth, dyed with madda. Rennie

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Challenge #04524-L140: Kharmic Realignment

You look so sad, why do you laugh?

"Because as much as they hurt me, they needed me far more than I needed them."

What happened?

"I walked away, and while I did not hurt them, exactly, I also refused to let them hurt me anymore."

And then?

"They hurt themselves instead. I do not laugh because I am happy of it. But rather, because I refuse to let them make me cry anymore." -- Anon Guest

Officially homeless, Ihagrah carried her

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Challenge #04523-L139: Works Like a Charm

They were selling tail hairs from unicorns and small pieces of horn. Small skeins of elf hair, and the shells of dragon eggs. Where did they get these? From bushes where hairs naturally were lost to shedding, places where pieces could be found where horns were scraped due to sharpening. From brushes after a being brushed their hair and threw the loose hairs from the brushes into leavings, and the shells were gathered, politely of course, by asking to clean the nest

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Challenge #04520-L136: Itinerant Sustenance Salesperson

Food Vans, Pie Carts and the dulcet tones of the ice cream seller. No matter where you are and what species you belong too., the urge for a quick or not so quick meal is universal. -- She Who Knits.

The concept of portable food is as old as gather-hunting. It's the concept of pre-prepared portable food that is, perhaps, one of the keystones of civilisation. The technology may differ, but the idea of someone else doing the cooking has appeal. Appeal

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Challenge #04518-L134: Heroic Motivation

They're at an Inn in the lands of Whitekeep, but do not sleep. When asked why, the human merely states that sleep scares them to death. Ever since evil pretending to be heroes, stole their brother's life. -- Anon Guest

[AN: Whitekeep's just one region in all of Alfarell. For most of the history, it was a quiet little Earldom that nobody cared about]

Bors was a man of rituals and superstition. If there was a day that he failed to don

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Challenge #04515-L131: A Taste of Home

Just like Mother used to make. A childhood treat, comfort food. There are thing that bring back memories from 'Granny's apple cake to 'Stretch the budget stew, where the vegetable crisper gets cleared out 3 days before pay day. -- She Who Knits

Far from civilisation as they knew it, far from the places they called home, scrounging together a meal out of whatever they had, the Adventurers were homesick. Huddled around the campfire, watching their meagre scrapings becoming part of their

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Challenge #04511-L127: To Choose Peace

"Would you side with these people against me?? You are just like me! Trufel!"

I am nothing like you. I believe in compassion.

"They will hate you and destroy everything you love!"

And I will forgive them.

"WHY??"

Because someone has to be the first to let go of the hate and try something else. -- Anon Guest

[AN: I looked up 'Trufel' and couldn't find more than a corruption of 'truffle' So I'm assuming that's a name]

Trufel took a deep

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Challenge #04510-L126: Not So Helpless

I may be in a wheelchair, but I can still kick your tail before you raise that blade. I'm limited, not helpless. -- Fighting Fit

[AN: Tempted to use Kosh's all-terrain wheelchair with caterpillar treads for this one, but nah. Should aim for the normal model]

The streets are paved well, and for that I am grateful. I've seen the perambulatory chair favoured by a noble or two, but that thing is frighteningly complicated. My main wheels are from a velocipede, and

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Challenge #04507-L123: Low Made High

An elderly person living alone in a hovel had but one wish. To live, if but for a little while, somewhere warm in their old age. They awoke one morning to find themselves in an enchanted wizard's tower, that was also part retirement home, that moved through the lands. And the kind wizard helping them, and other elderly, find solace and companionship in their twilight years. -- Lessons

For the longest time, the only care for the elderly was their younger family

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Challenge #04498-L114: Harder Heartstrings

They were young, but their heart was failing. One last adventure found a magic artifact that buried itself into their chest replacing the heart that had been damaged by long bouts of illness. However, unlike other artifacts similar to it, it did not try to change their usually kind, and gentle, nature. It simply acted as a replacement heart. -- Anon Guest

"One adventure," said Fennel. "All I need is to find a Hartsoke seed before it's too late." She was a

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Challenge #04495-L111: Fated Family

The caravan they came upon was destroyed, the family was dead. In the wreckage, Bribrid, a silvery eternal dragon in the guise of a gnome, finds a baby still alive and crying. Wraithvine, Bribrid, and their fluffy cat now have a child to raise. -- Anon Guest

They found the caravan too late to save it from the bandits. All that remained to do was inter the bodies and organise what salvage they could. At least until Bibrid heard the weak cry.

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